General

The programs below are available by requesting them via
e-mail. Some can be downloaded from the supplied link. All programs were written for use under Windows with a PC. Use the link which is present at the bottom of every page of this
website to send an e-mail request. All programs contain an HTML Help file.

A description of each program is below. The approximate total size of the installation files is also
given. The information should help decide whether the program may be of
interest before requesting it. Because of the large file sizes, broadband
e-mail access is almost essential.

For each program e-mailed as an attachment, it
will have three files called the installation files. These three files are
Setup.exe, Setup.lst and Progname.cab, where Progname is the actual program
name.

When you receive the installation files via e-mail, put the three files
in a directory by themselves (e.g. C:\Temp)
or they will overwrite any existing files with the same name. To install
the program, navigate to your chosen directory and double-click the Setup.exe
file.

Farmer

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Farmer stands for Forecasting
Amateur Radio Maps and Effective Range. It requires extra hardware
described in the Help file. It measures and logs the received RF signal
strength at the aerial connector of your FM receiver. It draws graphs in units of time versus
microVolts or dBm.

If you drive a route whilst logging received signal
strengths and you also have a Garmin GPS receiver logging your track, when you
have finished and display the recorded graph, you can see an internet map
showing where you were at any time. In other words, you can click the
graph at any point to see the date, time and received signal strength, with the
option of displaying the location on a UK map.

Farmer_K

The information below is not all correct. I must be very naive if I
believed that life is so straight forward. It appears that the rig models
mentioned below do speak the same secret language, but in different
dialects! Farmer_K works with the Kenwood TH-G71. Until I manage to
discover all of the dialects, it probably won't work with any other model.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Farmer_K is similar to Farmer, but it doesn't require rig modifications or a
USB digital voltmeter. It uses a data language to communicate with an FM
rig via an interface cable between the PC and the FM rig. It will
therefore only work with certain Kenwood FM transceivers. Once a second,
Farmer_K polls the FM rig and asks for its S meter level. The response is
displayed on a graph and written to a file. Like Farmer, a Garmin GPS
track file can be associated with the signal strength file to show a map of
where the received signal was at a certain strength.

Farmer_K was written to
work with a Kenwood TH-G71 hand portable rig. Other Kenwood rigs have the
same memory control data language, so it is believed that the program will also
work with the TH-D7, TH-F6, TH-F7, TH-K2, TH-K4, TM-V7, TM-271, TM-G707, TM-D700
and TM-D710. To enable the data control language with the TH-G71, select menu 15
and set TC (transceiver control) = ON.

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Once you have confirmed that your PC can talk to
the rig, you are ready to record a signal strength graph.

CRASH

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CRASH stands for Cleveland RAYNET
Automatic Sound Harvester. It can be used with a microphone, but was
designed to record the received audio of an FM receiver as a file on your hard
drive. It only records when audio is present, so on a RAYNET event lasting
8 hours in real time, the recorded file may be perhaps a total of 1 hour.
Each period of audio is date and time stamped, so that when playing the audio
file, each time somebody speaks, the time can be seen.

The trigger which
starts each period of sound recording is user selectable. It can be the
audio level (AC voltage) into the PC's microphone socket or it can be derived
from your FM receiver's squelch circuit and fed into your PC via a serial or
parallel port.

There is an oscilloscope and spectrum analyser display of the
recorded audio. That part of the program was provided by another software
author, Murphy McCauley.

There is also a facility to type a control log for a
RAYNET event and to automatically insert the time for each entry if desired.
There is a known bug. Some PCs can't see the table grid lines, so can't type a
log. The cause is probably the Windows display theme in use.

It is
suggested that before running CRASH for the first time, you create a new
sub-directory called...

My Documents/CRASH Sound Files

and use that to store
your recorded files. Navigate to that sub-directory the first time you
record a new file and the location will be remembered.

CURE

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CURE
stands for Checkpoint Update on RAYNET Events. Some events have many
participants visiting several check points and their times of arrival are noted
at each CP. Such events include mass moors walks, horse rides and cycle
rides. The concept of checking-in participants serves two purposes.
Firstly, it is a safety matter so that lost or overdue participants can be
recognised and their location known within a short distance. Secondly, for
competitive events with prizes, it is proof that competitors reached every CP on
the route.

CURE is a database program which allows the times of arrival of
participants to be entered. Apart from arrival times, status entries can
be made such as NON-STARTER, MISSED CP, OTHER ROUTE and RETIRED. The
program allows a quick display with totals of either ALL participants or only
those with the status of RETIRED, NON-STARTER etc. At suitable intervals,
the database file can be backed-up with a single mouse click.

Although CURE
can be used at some or all CPs on a route for the information of local
organisers, it was designed so that at suitable intervals (perhaps after each
new batch of 30 competitors arrive at a CP), RAYNET could pass the latest
database file to Control using a suitable radio data file transfer program such
as EasyPal. Control can then use another program called CUREplus to
display the progress of competitors through all CPs. As data file transfer
used by RAYNET means that not only Control, but any outstation can receive the
transmitted database files, other CPs can also see the most recent status of
competitors at any other CP if desired.

Either the exact times of arrival can
be entered into the database or the much quicker automatic time of entry can be
used. In other words, the competitor's serial number is either typed or
simply clicked on a datagrid and the current PC's time is entered.

CUREplus

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CUREplus
can only be used with the CURE database files described above. It is
mainly for use at Control so that CURE files transmitted from several
checkpoints can all be displayed in a single program to show the progress of
competitors on an event.

RayPath

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RayPath is a radio path power
budget program. It is best used with VHF or UHF radio path signal strength
prediction programs. You specify the transmit power, received signal
strength, aerial gains and coaxial cable losses. RayPath calculates the
signal path loss which will balance the equation.

RayPath can calculate coax
losses for specified lengths of some cables. It also knows aerial gain
values for several aerials.

RaceTime

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RaceTime helps to plan RAYNET events in which competitors travel a known
route. You specify the checkpoint names, the distance between checkpoints
and the guessed speed. RaceTime shows the estimated time of arrival at
each checkpoint.

You can specify the guessed speeds of the fastest and the
slowest competitors. Their ETAs at each checkpoint will be
displayed. If a known arrival time at a checkpoint is entered, the real
speed is calculated and also the ETAs at further checkpoints.

BattLife

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BattLife calculates the discharge life of a fully charged battery when used
with specified equipment. If you know the battery current drawn on
transmit and on receive by a particular rig, you can calculate how long the
internal or external battery will last.

UILogFilter

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This is a specialised program of interest only to users of the APRS UI-View32
program. If a UI-View log is made of stations heard over a period of time,
UILogFilter can edit the log to remove all stations which are not of
interest. It doesn't change the original log. It creates another log
file.

UI-PHG-DFS

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This is a specialised program of interest only to users of the APRS UI-View32
program. APRS is the Amateur Position Reporting System. Some APRS
stations transmit a PHG code or an RNG code to indicate their radio range as
well as their location. The UI-PHG-DFS program draws range circles around
APRS stations displayed on UI-View32 maps. As well as plain vanilla APRS
position beacons, the program also decodes compressed and Mic-E beacons.
For Radio Direction Finding purposes, the program decodes DFS and BRG codes to
draw either circles or bearings to a target station.

Arsenic
North Yorkshire

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Arsenic
stands for Automatic Relay Selection Establishing Networks In Cleveland.
That was the original version. This version also covers North
Yorkshire. The program is believed to be unique
and has very powerful facilities.

Arsenic knows the location of 89 VHF/UHF
relay locations covering a large area. For each, it knows the radio
coverage range maps on 2m and on 70cm. Relay points are accessible by
a normal car on public roads. A relay is defined as a standard RAYNET
mobile running 10W or 50W RF to a 5/8 whip. It could be a Net Control station, a
manual relay or a cross-band talk-through relay. This version also caters
for relays using a mast and a high gain aerial, but the other stations are
always assumed to be standard RAYNET mobiles.

If there is snow on the roads,
some relay locations may be inaccessible. Arsenic know which relays are on
a Priority 1 or 2 snowplough route and potentially snowed up relay sites can all
be disabled with a click of the mouse.

Click any point on the
Arsenic map (or enter an OS NGR). The county is calculated and
shown. Of the 89 relay locations, all in range of the selected point are
listed. Click two points on the Arsenic map (or enter OS NGRs). All
relay locations in range of both selected points are listed. In addition,
relays which are in both 2m and 70cm range are indicated as allowing cross-band
talk-through.

If no such
single relay location exists, Arsenic will list two relays in range of each
other which will allow double talk-through (XBTT in series) to link the two
selected locations.

With an infinite number of selected locations, 1,312 radio
paths on 2m between the relays and another 682 radio paths on 70cm, the radio
coverage was calculated theoretically. Visiting an infinite number of
locations would take quite a while. Infinity is a long time, especially
towards the end. Arsenic was fine tuned by visiting many locations and
measuring received signal strengths in microVolts using the Farmer program.

TMV7E_RC

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TMV7E_RC
is a program which allows remote control over the air using DTMF codes. It
controls the Kenwood TM-V7E and TM-732E dual band 2m/70cm talk-through rigs
which are used by some RAYNET groups. It is believed that the program will
also work with Kenwood models TM-742E, TM-V71E and TM-D710E.

The program can be used with any 2m or 70cm FM rig to remotely control
one of the above models. It generates DTMF control codes. The most
reliable method of use is with a suitable interface cable which connects the
PC's headphone socket to the local rig's mike socket and also connects the PC's
serial port to the rig's PTT line. An interface cable for APRS,
AX.25 or SSTV will probably work. It can also be used (less
reliably) by simply holding the local rig's mike near the PC's loudspeaker.

There
is also the facility of synthesised speech to give a network announcement or a
callsign before each command is transmitted.

The installation files total about
2.7
MB. The latest version is 1.2.0. It works with Windows XP. It has not been fully tested with
Vista and the DTMF tones sound strange with Vista. It may be
downloaded from http://www.mediafire.com/?99hx6z94v3mzhed

RAYNET EP Message Form

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RAYNET
EP Message Form is an add-on program for EasyPal by Erik VK4AES. EasyPal
can transfer text files fairly quickly, but they aren't formatted, so may not
look pleasing to the eye or be easy to read. Formatting a message using
e.g. Rich Text File format or Microsoft Word, would make it longer to transfer
the file. A message can be typed into a RAYNET message form on the screen,
then it is pasted into EasyPal for transmission. At the receiving end, the
text message can be inserted into the RAYNET EP Message Form and it can be
printed if required. The message form template graphics are not transmitted by
EasyPal.

The program can display a list of every RAYNET message sent or
received, showing the date, time and first 30 characters of the text. Any
can be inserted into the message form template for viewing or printing, by a
couple of clicks of the mouse.

Note
that V1.6.0 will only work with versions of EasyPal which are 22 January 2011
or later.

Help For EasyPal

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This
is not a program. It is an HTML format help file I made. The EasyPal
program by Erik Sundstrup VK4AES has no help file. There are online help
pages, but most are out of date and of course an internet connection is
required. Windows should recognise this as a standard HTML help file and
open it using file hh.exe, but if you have problems opening it, Microsoft has
licensed me to distribute file hh.exe so send me an e-mail.